John XXIII, God’s crafty peasant saint

The portraits of the popes of the last century, John XXIII

Andrea Torniellirome

«Who would I be if one day the Lord did not call me into another field? I would be a farm laborer, as are many of my nieces and nephews. Some of them, while still accepting the gift of education and culture, wanted to stay in the fields to work. Others found – just like all Italians - that at some point the land was no longer sufficient for their increased manpower, and they went into factories and workshops».

If Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli - the “Good Pope” John XXIII (1881-1958) - hadn’t been bound by Providence and climbed all the rungs of the ecclesiastic hierarchy, he would perhaps be still tying bundles in the fields, as did many of his relatives, and as he has symbolically continued to do in his own special way. A “Good Pope” but not at all naive, during his long and busy diplomatic career Roncalli held fast to that healthy peasant craftiness he had absorbed from his family environment.

Born in Brusicco, a little village of Sotto il Monte in the province of Bergamo, the future John XXIII grew up in a humble home: «We were poor, but happy in our condition and we trusted in Providence for help. There was never bread on our table, only polenta; no wine for children and young people, and rarely meat... Yet when a beggar showed up at our kitchen door, where about twenty kids waited impatiently for a bowl of soup, there was always a place for them, and my mother worried about seating them next to someone they didn’t know!»

When in March 1925 Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, Pius XI’s Secretary of State, informs Monsignor Roncalli that he is to be made a bishop and appointed Apostolic Visitor to Bulgaria, the prelate asks to be consecrated on Saint Joseph’s name day. Roncalli explains to his superior, who listens with a certain amazement, «To me this this saint should be the best patron and teacher for the diplomats of the Holy See!To be obedient, silent when necessary, to speak measuredly and politely:this is the diplomat of the Holy See, this is Saint Joseph, always silent and obedient».

Finally, in July of the same year, only seven prelates were discreetly dismissed. The fact that Roncalli was a frank man – good, but certainly not innocent - served him very well during the events in the interregnum after the death of Pope Pacelli. The prelate from Bergamo, at that time Cardinal Patriarch of Venice, was already 77 years old - quite an advanced age for an aspiring Pope. But after the long reign of Pius XII, an idea takes shape among the electors of a “papacy of transition».

The approach adopted in those days by the future John XXIII shows how he had the potential to be this candidate.An example:the group of curial cardinals feared the return of Archbishop of Milan Giovanni Battista Montini to Rome as Secretary of State. Here Roncalli, though protecting and having enormous respect for Montini (whom he would immediately create cardinal and whose Papal election as his successor he would prophesize) makes it known to one of them: «Whoever becomes Pope, how could he appoint as Secretary of State a man who is really not wanted by his own curial cardinals?».

John XXIII is immediately able to speak directly to the heart of men at the Coronation Mass, which lasted a good five hours: «The new Pope, through the course of life events, is like a son of Jacob, who by meeting human suffering with his brothers, discovers in them tenderness of heart, and bursting into tears says, ‘It is I...your brother Giuseppe».

John XXIII was unfortunately the victim of two interpretations, each reductive in their own way. The first depicts him as merely the “Good Pope,” stopping only to smell the flowers and tell anecdotes that may be plentiful, but not always true. The second, propagated by the Bologna school of Professor Giuseppe Alberigo, depicts him as a true “revolutionary,” attributing all the innovative decisions that were undoubtedly made during his tenure directly to him, and attributing to the “resistant” Roman Curia all the more conservative ones. In truth, Roncalli was never a revolutionary.He was actually a rather traditionalist Pope, who officiated a Roman Synod which confirmed anachronistically severe prescriptions for priests. It is well-known that he wanted the Council to conclude in three months’ time.

Soaked in peasant wisdom, he was able to use all the “weapons” necessary to break down his interlocutor, as in his messages to Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis, or his historic audience with Adjubej, son of the President of the Central Committee of the USSR.His distinction between the error and the errant – the first is always to be condemned, while the second is to be pardoned and welcomed – would characterize not only the life of the Church, but also Italian politics, with gentle openings to the center-left after years of rigidity in the Vatican’s position. But to pass his “update” off as an irrevocable revolution would be to create a fictitious image of the Pope from Bergamo.

The English Archbishop John Carmel Heenan would write: «Pope John was not an innovator…The Pope that I knew was nothing like the mythical John. My Pope John seemed more like a country priest, full of kindness».